Ideas vs Ego: disassociating your ideas from your ego is key to growth
/By Duncan Anderson. To see all blogs click here.
Reading time: 5 mins
Summary: To me, far more important than ‘how good one is today’ is the ‘trajectory of one’s growth’. As such what matters is not if one is right or wrong but how fast one can upgrade. A key strategy I have for improving upgrade trajectory is to try to dissociate one's ideas from one’s ego. The corollary of this is to set the expectation in meetings that feedback is about ideas, not about individuals (ego).
Jingle: If you want to have a massively capable mind (AKA have done lots of upgrades, AKA have a large ego), then first I think you need to let go of your… ego!
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Details
What matters is not ‘how good one is today’ but the ‘trajectory of one’s growth’.
I think it’s innate not to like being ‘wrong’, but trying not to be wrong can be a large impediment to growth.
Ideas vs Facts
For Facts there is a right / wrong. Eg today is Saturday, eg the coffee costs $4.
For Ideas there is no right / wrong, just your current best version of what to do. Eg how to best spend a Saturday. Eg how to best make a coffee. Eg how to improve education the most. Eg how to best be a friend.
Ergo, for Ideas you can never not improve further.
*aside: this also relates to the idea of places with ceilings vs ceilingless places.
As such, for Ideas, what matters is not being right / wrong, but the trajectory of your improvement with Ideas.
For most of high school there is an artificifical ‘right / wrong’ (ceiling of 100%). For most Ideas in life not only isn’t there an agreed upon right/ wrong, things can almost always be improved.
For example you can get 10/10 on the english essay, or A+ for a history project.
At school if you can defend against someone why you are ‘right’, then you often get the ‘mark’ and a good outcome.
In life if you defend against someone why your Idea is ‘not wrong’, you often lose the opportunity to upgrade your idea and get a bad outcome.
I find that normally the default story is to try to defend against why someone says your thought might be ‘not correct’.
But I think a far more helpful story is to try to collaborate with others to upgrade Ideas.
In short, normally in school it’s about the marks you get, aka your ego.
In the real world, normally it’s about trying to improve Ideas you and others have, aka about the Idea.
*aside: this is a partial rearticulation of ‘Defence mode Vs Understanding mode’
Give feedback about Ideas in public, give feedback about people in private.
Often half the battle is about taking feedback as about the Idea, not about yourself (ego).
I think you want to set the expectations that in group meetings feedback is always about the Idea, not about people.
When everyone in a group meeting understands that all feedback is to improve an Idea, I find often the tenor changes.
This doesn’t mean you don’t give feedback more directly to people, just I normally find it much better to give feedback about a person in a 1:1 setting
Clearly defining meetings as “For your information” or “For Discussion” also helps to guide what type of feedback you are seeking in a meeting - ones about ideas or ones about people?
Group people feedback can be handled in group meetings if the discussion is around group behaviour.
Personal behaviour should always be handled in 1:1 settings, this also includes emails
some emails are better if sent directly to the person rather than to the whole team
Associate your ego with growth trajectory, not with being right / wrong.
Defending against feedback = Trying to protect ego = Seeing why you are not wrong = Not trying to see how you can grow
Trying to incorporate feedback = Trying to upgrade Idea = Seeing where you can level up = Trying to see how you can grow
Future self = Today self + Growth Today
Growth Today = Trying to incorporate feedback
Normally what matters is not you vs others. What matters is you vs yourself yesterday.
I’ll often refer to ‘5 years ago Duncan’, I like to think I’ve grown a lot because of the work put into upgrade myself.
Sometimes there is someone you feel that you want to impress so if they are putting forward ways to improve your idea, you might feel you haven’t impressed them.
However, often the best way to impress is to show your trajectory growing.
AKA is to show you have dissociated your ego from your Ideas. That you can incorporate real time feedback / upgrades and level up!
Fixed mindset = there is nothing wrong with your proposal = good
Growth mindset = we found a way to improve the proposal = good
Seeing mistakes as learning opportunities and positive experiences rather than focusing on the negative.
Learning from a mistake can be > creating a new idea on your own from your ego.
Intellectual insecurity often lowers growth trajectory
Zero sum = People have intellectual insecurity = About not getting things wrong = Feedback is about you
Positive sum = Low intellectual insecurity = About trajectory = Feedback about Idea
So in a funny way the best way to grow your mind is to not care about whether your mind is relatively strong / weak vs others (aka to let go of ego). The more you have let go of ego the faster your mind can grow? I think so!
If you only take away one thing
The human mind is the most complicated thing in the known universe.
I believe the human mind is limitless… if you get out of your own way!
One key to human mind growth is trajectory, AKA focusing on upgrading your ideas by seeing your mistakes as positive learning experiences AKA not worrying about being right or wrong.